Stick and Wheel

The classic toy. All you need is a stick, a wheel, and a little imagination. This Kachin kid was having so much fun that I had to film him. [NOTE: He had been coming over to the field office in Shinlonga for days before I finally got out the video camera].

Believe Your Eyes

Laying out the baseline at Shinlonga (see The Last Stake) involved a strange mix of GPS and compass. As shown in the photo above, Jon Kuan is using a compass to lay out the next plot stake, but he has a GPS is his other hand to "check" how the line is going.

The baseline that the crew at Shinlonga laid out was one of the straightest, most bearing-correct lines I've ever run in a tropical forest. In most places, you could easily line up three or four stakes (see image below). The guys, however, took a waypoint on every stake and were continually plotting the line - which zigzagged all over the place. This was due to the 5 to 7 meter positional error necessarily involved in every GPS reading. Although their eyes were telling them that the line was as straight as a string, the GPS was telling them that they were going crooked. And they worried about this. I finally convinced them to believe their eyes and to put their GPS receivers back in their packs. [NOTE: When we eventually plotted the first and last waypoints, our baseline was oriented precisely magnetic North, a result which seemed to reassure everyone about the quality of the work].

The Last Stake

After running two kilometers of line through a tract of forest located several hours walk from the village of Shinlonga in the Hukaung Tiger Reserve (see Naw Aung and His Sagawa), setting the last stake was an auspicious occasion. [NOTE: It took three days to clear the line and set all 20 stakes. These stakes form the baseline of a 100 hectare intensive management area for the community, and are the starting points of inventory transects. It's an amazing thing that we are doing here]. 

Chinlone

Every day after work when we were in Shinlonga, the guys would get together and play chinlone for about an hour before it got dark. Amazing to watch. Certainly one of the most unique and beautiful ball games in the world - and the ball is made out of rattan. [NOTE: I always wondered where they got the energy to do this after working all day; music by Avishai Cohen].

The Cookie and the Caterpillar

This ones's pretty straightforward. Blissfully happy little Kachin girl with a package of sugar wafers in one hand and a twig with a huge green caterpillar in the other. [NOTE: This was taken while doing household interviews in Shinlonga last week].

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

A bit of holiday cheer. This clip, filmed last week, shows the kitchen and the cooking crew at the camp in Shinlonga in the Hukaung Tiger Reserve.  The guys are preparing lunch, but I was most taken by what was playing on the radio.  Never heard this song in Burmese before...

Naw Sein

Naw Sein is a Kachin villager that worked with us to set up the management area in Shinlonga. He mainly helped with tree identifications and managed the transect rope when we were measuring between plots. And he did this with such poise and insouciance. Note the cheroot in his left hand, the blue plaid longyi, and the yellow transect rope (see Shopping for Rope in Tanai) in his right hand configured in the shape of an endless or eternal knot. [NOTE: This beautiful portrait of Naw Sein was taken by Rob Tizard, Technical Advisor to the WCS Myanmar Program (thx, Rob)].

Naw Aung and His Sagawa

I spent the last two weeks in northern Myanmar working with Kachin villagers from Shinlonga (see Shinlonga and Morning Mist) on a community forestry project.  Much of the time I was living in a tent in the forest two hours walk from the village laying out a 100 hectare management area.  Naw Aung (shown above) was along to help us identify trees; he had also worked with me when I was in Shinlonga last May (see Field Crew; he's to my right in a woven hat.)

On the way to the management area, Naw Aung came across a large sagawa tree (Michelia champaca L.) that had fallen across the trail. Sagawa is one of the preferred construction timbers in Shinlonga and the species is hard to find. Although this tree had been dead for a while, the heartwood was still solid and several posts could be cut from it. To claim the wood, Naw Aung put a little sign in front of the log (shown in photo above) and then he carved his name on the log. This, apparently, is sufficient to let people know that the tree belongs to him.  

Field Crew

Here's the crew that did the inventory work at Shinlonga last month (see Shinlonga). A fantastic team and a delightful group of people.  Was great fun working with them. [NOTE: Image was taken after the first day's transect when we were still fresh.]  

Morning Mist

 

An early morning walk in the village of Shinlonga (see Shinlonga) produced this image.  Lot of plant products visible here.  The fencing and the walls and the floor are made out of bamboo; the roof is palm thatch.